Page 33 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

save all whom He wills should be saved, so He will as surely condemn all
whom He wills shall be condemned; for He is the Judge of the whole earth,
whose decree shall stand, and from whose sentence there is no appeal. "Hath He
said, and shall He not make it good? hath He spoken, and shall it not come to

pass?" And His decree is this: that these (i.e., the non-elect, who are left under
the guilt of final impenitence, unbelief and sin) "shall go away into everlasting
punishment, and the righteous (i.e., those who, in consequence of their election

in Christ and union to Him, are justly reputed and really constituted such) shall
enter into life eternal" (Matt. 25.46).

(5) The reprobate shall undergo this punishment justly and on account of their

sins. Sin is the meritorious and immediate cause of any man's damnation. God
condemns and punishes the non-elect, not merely as men, but as sinners, and

had it pleased the great Governor of the universe to have entirely prevented sin
from having any entrance into the world, it would seem as if He could not,
consistently with His known attributes, have condemned any man at all. But, as
all sin is properly meritorious of eternal death, and all men are sinners, they who

are condemned are condemned most justly, and those who are saved are saved
in a way of sovereign mercy through the vicarious obedience and death of

Christ for them.

Now this twofold predestination, of some to life and of others to death (if it may
be called twofold, both being constituent parts of the same decree), cannot be
denied without likewise denying (1) most express and frequent declarations of

Scripture, and (2) the very existence of God, for, since God is a Being perfectly
simple, free from all accident and composition, and yet a will to save some and

punish others is very often predicated of Him in Scripture, and an immovable
decree to do this, in consequence of His will, is likewise ascribed to Him, and a
perfect foreknowledge of the sure and certain accomplishment of what He has
thus willed and decreed is also attributed to Him, it follows that whoever denies

this will, decree and foreknowledge of God, does implicitly and virtually deny
God Himself, since His will, decree and foreknowledge are no other than God

Himself willing and decreeing and foreknowing.

II.—We assert that God did from eternity decree to make man in His own
image, and also decreed to suffer him to fall from that image in which he should

be created, and thereby to forfeit the happiness with which he was invested,
which decree and the consequences of it were not limited to Adam only, but
included and extended to all his natural posterity.